Many students crack JEE (Mains), but fail Bihar board exams

At least five students who qualified the JEE (Mains) and had taken the JEE (Advanced) test on May 21 have flunked the Bihar intermediate exams, leaving them crestfallen. With 8 lakh-plus failures out of 12.40 lakh students who took the Bihar board Class 12 exams, the overall pass percentage has plummeted from 62.19 last year to 35.25 this year, raising serious concerns about Bihar’s education system.

A student who succeeded in the JEE (Mains) failed in the Bihar board Class 12 exams, results of which were declared on May 30. (AP Dube/HT photo)

PATNA Many students who had cracked the joint entrance examination (JEE)-Mains examination for admission to premier engineering institutes like the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and the National Institute of Technology (NIT) have flunked the Bihar intermediate examinations, the results of which were declared in Patna on Tuesday.

Sample this:

Vivek Kumar cracked the JEE Mains, with a score of 109 out of 360 under the reserved category, but failed the Bihar board intermediate exams, having secured 12 out of 60 in physics theory.

Anuj Kumar, another successful candidate in the JEE (Mains), with a rank of 28,000, had also failed the class 12 exams. Kumar got 12/60 in physics and 17/60 in chemistry theory papers.

Shubham Sharma also qualified the JEE (Mains), with a rank of 78,000 in the reserved category, but failed the Class 12 exams, having got 06/60 in physics theory.

Similarly, Ravi Kumar of Bihar’s Siwan district had also cleared the JEE (Mains), but had failed the Class 12 exams, having scored poorly in English and chemistry.

Sahul Kumar, who made the JEE (Mains), with a score of 65 - the cut-off under OBC category being 49 – was not assigned marks in any of the six subjects in the marksheet uploaded on its website by the Bihar board.

Ompriya of Jamui district had made the cut in the KL Marine entrance examination, but failed the Bihar board exams, having got 34/100 in chemistry — 10 in theory and 24 in practical — out of 100 marks.

“I had done well in the exams. My overall score was 273 out of 500 (main five subjects), but I don’t know how the entire evaluation has been done. I had not done as bad to deserve just 12/60 in physics theory,” said Vivek Kumar.

With anger writ large on their faces, the students sat on protest outside the office of the Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) in Patna for the second day on Thursday. They apprehended that answer copies could have got mixed during evaluation.

The BSEB had introduced barcoding of answer books to check manipulation, after the intermediate toppers scam last year, resulting in Ruby Roy losing her intermediate (arts) toppers’ tag.

The results this year came as a shock to many. Out of the 12.40 lakh students, who took the Class 12 or intermediate examination conducted by the BSEB, just 4.37 lakh or 35.25% managed to clear the board exam, leaving 8 lakh-plus failures.

This was a drastic climbdown from last year, when 11.55 lakh students appeared in the exam and 7.18 lakh or 62.19% cleared it.

This year, only 30.11% students cleared the Class 12 or intermediary science (ISc) exam. Last year, the pass percentage of ISc students was 67.06 and in 2015 89.32% students cleared the exam.

In view of vehement student protest, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar has now said that suspect answer books would be re-evaluated.

Most of these students who had taken the JEE (Advanced) exams on May 21 and were awaiting the final result, were now hoping for some miracle to happen after the chief minister’s assurance.

BSEB chairman Anand Kishore said that copies would be checked during ‘scrutiny’ (re-evaluation) as there could be some fault in filling the optical mark recognition (OMR) sheets.